Ten Halloweens
by stuff'n'nonsense
Summary: An Elysian Fields challenge response: Halloween with Giles and Anya in eleven drabbles.
1. 1999

He never would have guessed she'd come to him: Giles barely knew Anya. But somehow her faith that he would ride to the rescue made him feel capable of absolutely anything – including wielding a chainsaw, which, quite frankly, was one of the more terrifying experiences of his adult life.

After her reunification with Xander, Giles was stunned to find himself jealous. Not in a strictly literal sense, of course! But she looked at that boy like he was the centre of her universe, and no one had looked at Giles like that for a very long time indeed. If ever.


	2. 2000

The customers kept coming like a biblical plague; Anya adored every second of it. She wasn't paying a lot of attention to Giles, but every so often they'd brush past each other and share the Secret Smile of Successful Shopkeepers that was theirs and no one else's.

When they finally closed, he looked at her and he smiled and it was so much sexier than that night at the Espresso Pump. She knew, then, that there were things she could do that weren't about vengeance, that there was a purpose and a place for her. Because he believed in her.


	3. 2001

When Xander made the announcement, Giles suddenly couldn't breathe. He'd begun to see Anya differently since her matter-of-fact suggestions about the troll hammer and the Dagon sphere. She was more than just a vapid, self-obsessed, ex-demon: she had superlative commercial and financial instincts, even if her customer service left something to be desired – like any notion of service. She could make a success out of anything.

Marriage, though? To _Xander_ , of all people. They would buy a house soon. Probably have children. He could imagine Anya pregnant: demanding and waspish but glowing with life. She'd be magnificent. And never his.


	4. 2002

She knew she shouldn't be calling. It was late there, and ever since that time she'd got over-excited and teleported straight into his bedroom – well, _bed_ , strictly speaking – he'd made her promise to respect the time difference.

Giles' voice was rough with sleep, but already hesitant and awkward. Getting engaged to Xander had ended their Secret Smile of Successful Shopkeepers and they'd never really regained the lost ground. It made her sad. Anya wondered, again, why he'd refused to come to her wedding-that-wasn't. Would things have been different if he had?

She took a deep breath. "I'm an ex-demon again."


	5. 2003

"No," Giles said, shaking his head. "This is _not_ happening."

Anya rolled her eyes. "Denial never actually achieves anything."

"If your plan is to, er, to move my furniture around and so infuriate me with your self-centred behaviour that I stop idealising your memory, don't bother. I've never once forgotten how annoying you can be."

She laughed. "Nah. I was thinking maybe we could put on "Unchained Melody" and you could tell me how much you love me and I could be all emotionally repressed and keep saying 'ditto'."

Giles' hand passed through her again. "I'd rather just touch you."


	6. 2004

_Special thanks go to Dactylgirl/TerrusDacktellus for giving me a chronology for Giles through the comics. Any canonical missteps are my own, as I haven't read them._

* * *

They hadn't seen each other in months. But instead of saying something about how grey and miserable Buffy looked (like everyone else did), Giles started talking about how Halloween always made him think of Anya.

" _Anya_?" she said. "But you barely even _liked_ Anya!"

Giles' expression fell back into the sour, pinched expression he almost always wore around her these days and Buffy felt even more cut off. "Yes, well. Perhaps now you understand my surprise regarding Spike."

Buffy began her usual frantic litany of denials and justifications.

Exhausted, he snapped, "Oh, will you just get on a bloody plane!"


	7. 2005

_Previously on Buffy (courtesy of Dactylgirl / TerrusDacktellus): at the end of season 8, Angel kills Giles while under the control of Twilight. Season 9 of Angel and Faith is devoted to Angel working to bring Giles back; Eyghon was in possession of Giles' soul throughout the season (Giles having technically sold it to him as a young man)._

* * *

It wasn't the same, haunting Xander. She'd appear; they'd argue; he'd beg forgiveness; she'd refuse. It all got so very dull! Afterwards, she felt something that she would've called indigestion if she'd still had an intestinal tract, but Giles probably would've said was guilt.

She never expected to miss him quite this much.

He'd been so _difficult_ from the moment she'd manifested. Trying to discover whether he was talking to Aud's soul or Anyanka's spirit and how to make her corporeal. Wanting to save her.

And now he desperately needed saving and she was powerless to do anything to help.


	8. 2006

_Previously on Buffy (courtesy of Dactylgirls / TerrusDacktellus): At the end of season 9, Angel, Faith and Spike fight Eyghon and get Giles' soul back. With the help of Giles' aunts, they resurrect Giles but they screw it up and he comes back in his 12-year-old body. Giles is not pleased._

* * *

The book he wanted was too high up and too heavy for him to retrieve without aid. Giles swore in frustration. He might be alive, soul intact, but he hated the everyday betrayals from his new weak and graceless body. And he still had the full onslaught of puberty to contend with.

He couldn't bear for her to see him like this, for her to hear his high-pitched child's voice.

"It's very rude of you to keep ignoring me, you know," Anya said. She moved her fingers through his hair – a pretence of stroking. "Age is hardly our biggest problem."


	9. 2007

Anya was bored and frustrated. Thirteen-year-old Giles turned out to be self-absorbed, moody, all-too-frequently irrationally angry … and still physically a child. His lack of interest in sex made her worry that Angel had somehow accidentally stunted his development, because, really, by thirteen it should be occupying most of his attention.

She would have stopped haunting him months ago if it weren't for the words he used when he wasn't distracted by all-out hatred of his body. They were so beautiful they made everything indescribably better and achingly worse all at the same time.

She only wanted to touch him.


	10. 2008

There was food _actually still in the fridge_ , which neither of them could remember happening since Giles had started growing. Something was very wrong.

They'd planned the intervention together, but Spike snuck in first by himself. Giles' Child Protection Services fiasco had sent Buffy hurtling back into PTSD and Spike wasn't about to let that happen again. Ever. But it wasn't anything like that – or any of the other things he'd feared.

Beside himself with worry, Giles finally told Spike about Anya. And how she was starting to fade.

After a long silence, Spike said: "There's this demon in Africa…."


	11. Epilogue

"Lloyd?" Anya's haggard face brightened. "Spike didn't say it was you!"

The demon never even looked at Giles. After watching the darkness swallow them up, he began to laugh. _Of course_ the trials were hers. How impossibly arrogant of him ever to believe otherwise!

He sat in the cave mouth for a long time, waiting for whoever or whatever was coming back to him. Because he knew she'd come back. His real fear was _how_.

When Anya(nka?) came stumbling out of the darkness, bloody and bowed but whole and unbroken and _touchable_ , he realised the how didn't matter. Not anymore.


End file.
